The scariest "F" word: Feminism

This post connects slightly to Ashley’s earlier post about how women’s rights are currently placed in the human rights framework. What she said reminds me about how I often run across people (my students, people in the news, or people in everyday conversation), who take up issue with the word “feminism." Sometimes individuals claim that renaming feminism or reframing to something more “gender neutral” and less politicized (such as human rights, humanism) will help us avoid some of these problems.

As we have discussed, feminisms and feminists have often focused on issues that are faced by predominantly white, Global North, middle/upper class women. In our class, Chant (2012) explained how in development work, our constant focus on girls and women leave out a lot of people (older women, men, and boys). Furthermore, within feminism there is often a systematic lack of attention to race (see White, 2006). Therefore, I agree that feminists must work (and are working) to be more inclusive of the many ways that people are marginalized and oppressed (such as race, class, sexuality, nationality, etc.), and that if we ignore these inersectionalities, we are failing.

However, it seems to me that some of the problems many people have with the word “feminist” go back to the some of the very reasons that we need feminism. In classes I have taught in the past, I have had students watch short videos in which men speak about feminism, and among other questions, I always ask my students what it is like to hear a man talking about feminism. What do they think of this? One example of this is Joss Whedon’s speech about what he things is wrong with the word feminism (his reasons are not the traditional reasons cited). Time and time again, students talk about how a man is more credible when he talks about feminism or that he is more “unbiased” and because of this, they appreciate hearing a man speak about feminism (yikes!). I agree that it is good to hear people of all genders advocate for feminism, but not for these reasons.

Emma Watson was told not to use the word “feminism” at her UN speech last year because it alienated and separated people. Although in this speech Watson too was reinforcing this gender binary and a focus solely on women, her convicted use that word has influenced many of my undergraduate students to feel comfortable and confident in calling themselves feminists. They have said this in their own speeches during a public speaking class I taught in the past. However, part of the reason I am writing this blog post is that many (most) of my students admit that they are uncomfortable applying the word to themselves and have negative connotations with it.

Now, I’m not lauding either of these speeches as ideal examples of feminism, but I am using them to point out the ways in which there is still widespread fear of feminism. The history that we read and that is taught early on in school paints over issues of gender injustice, racism, and colonialism with a romanticized, selective brush. The way we learn history seems to say these things existed kind of—let’s not talk about it. Unless people elect into it (and usually not to college), we do not learn much about histories that are not white male centric (at least in the U.S.). I feel that part of the word people fear the word feminist is that they are not taught about how bad many of our historical injustices were. I am also not sure that a textbook could even get us there (maybe stories, films, poetry, art?). To abandon/change the word feminist (as some people have suggested) is also to ignore the work that many people did historically (even though this work was too not inclusive of all women/genders) to bring about some important changes in gender justice throughout history. It ignores why we needed the word in the first place, and it ignores the exclusive history that the word has. We need to talk about this history and problems with the word feminism, and seek a feminism that takes other oppressions into account, instead of finding a “new word.”

A recent NPR article discussed how Sweden distributed Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s essay “We Should All be Feminists” to every 16-year-old student in the country (see http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/12/04/458514464/sweden-gives-we-should-all-be-feminists-to-every-16-year-old-student).  Now, I have not read this essay (because I just came across this article this morning), but I intend to. The NPR article ended with this quote from Adichie’s essay which speaks to this very question about why the word feminism. She writes:

"Some people ask: 'Why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?' Because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general - but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem acknowledge that."

Not only might abandoning the word feminism gloss over the inequality that women have experienced for centuries, but it seems to be an act of forgetting the feminisms and the feminists of the past. I think we need to remember, learn about, and understand these feminisms and stay connected to them. There are valid critiques of feminisms, and feminists should attend to these critiques. However, it seems that people, in general, often fear and avoid this word because of the very reason we need this word. Challenging patriarchy and pointing out gender injustices is still very radical. And when people who are not men challenge patriarchy, this is even more radical.